Profile: Jon Summers

Jon Summers was a participant or observer in the following events:

Screenshot from ‘The Real Sharron Angle,’ a Web site containing information from Angle’s previous site and hosted by the Nevada Democratic Party. [Source: CNN]Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle (see January 2010 and June 30, 2010) “relaunches” her campaign Web site after winning the Nevada Republican primary. Before the June 8 victory, Angle’s Web site contained a great deal of information about her far-right views, including her intention to, as an elected senator, dismantle Social Security and the Department of Education, cut funds for child support organizations, further deregulate the mortgage and lending industries, repeal health care reform and deregulate the health care industry, relaunch the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, and advocate armed insurrection against the US Congress under Democratic leadership. After the primary victory, Angle’s campaign scrubbed the Web site of almost all its content. Now the site is far more moderate, containing little of the information it contained while Angle was working to secure the GOP nomination. The campaign of her opponent, Harry Reid (D-NV), will post the information from Angle’s “old” site on Reid’s campaign site, leading the Angle campaign to issue a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Reid remove the material. Reid’s campaign will do so, and the Nevada Democratic Party will launch its own Web site, “Sharron’s Underground Bunker,” featuring synopses of the material on Angle’s previous campaign site. Reid’s campaign spokesman Jon Summers says: “These are Sharron Angle’s positions in Sharron’s own words from Sharron’s own Web site. What was good enough for Nevada voters to read during the primary should be good enough for them now. Sharron has long believed in killing Social Security, eliminating the Departments of Education and Energy, and shipping nuclear waste to Nevada. We’ve always heard that Sharron Angle is an unapologetic conservative. It has to be embarrassing for her to have her handlers trying to hide who she really is.” Reid campaign deputy communications director Zac Petkanas says, “Sharron Angle is hiding her views from Nevada voters.” [Nevada Democratic Party, 7/2010; Mitchell, 7/2/2010; TPMDC, 7/5/2010]

Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, running as a Republican against Democrat Harry Reid, retracts her statement that Reid should be “take[n] out” by “Second Amendment remedies”—i.e. through the use of firearms. Angle made the statement in January as part of a larger statement in favor of conservatives mounting an armed insurrection against Congress (see January 2010). After Angle won the June 8 primary, reporters began writing about her earlier statements. She now says her words about “tak[ing] out” Reid were “a little strong,” and says she no longer uses that phrase (see June 16, 2010). However, she refuses to apologize for her words. “I meant take him out of office, and taking him out of office is a little different,” Angle says. “I changed my rhetoric.” Angle routinely speaks with conservative radio hosts, but almost never with actual members of the press. In withdrawing her January statement, she gives a rare interview to Nevada’s KVBC. In the interview, she declares her intention as a senator to dismantle Social Security, repeal abortion in nearly all instances (including rape and incest), and claims that the Constitution has no provision for the separation of church and state (see September 17, 2010). Reid’s campaign has stated that Angle believes such church-state separation is unconstitutional, leading Angle spokesman Jerry Stacy to accuse Reid of finding “ways to twist a larger historical statement Angle was making about the origins of separation of church and state.” Stacy explains that Reid is “terrified of having a real discussion about jobs and the economy.” Reid campaign spokesman Jon Summers says Reid stands by his campaign’s position, and adds that he believes Angle meant exactly what she said when she recommended that Reid be “take[n] out” by force. “It wasn’t a gaffe, it is a philosophy,” he says. “She has repeated that language many times.” [Las Vegas Sun, 6/8/2010; Associated Press, 6/30/2010]

Nevada Republican Sharron Angle, running for the US Senate against Harry Reid (D-NV), urges her supporters in Utah to “take out” Reid. In January, Angle told a conservative radio host that someone should “take him [Reid] out” by “Second Amendment remedies,” which most observers took to mean by the use of firearms (see January 2010). Angle later withdrew her statement and said she meant “take him out of office” (see June 30, 2010). She said she had “changed her rhetoric” and would not use the term again. Angle restates her comment to say she wants to “defeat” Reid in the November election: “In Nevada, we understand we have the opportunity to take out—to defeat,” she says, drawing laughter. “I really have had to find a whole new vocabulary since the primaries.… The first thing we need to do is to defeat Harry Reid. That defeat will send a shock wave through Congress. It will let them know that this train is coming. They can either get on board or get run over by it.” Angle’s speech is part of a larger conference called “Utah United” that draws some 400 conservatives from Utah and the surrounding area, many of whom are self-described “tea party” members. The conference is sponsored by, among others: the far-right extremist John Birch Society (see March 10, 1961 and December 2011), the Eagle Forum, the National Center for Constitutional Studies, and the Utah Farm Bureau. Angle is one of several hard-right GOP candidates at the conference. She has the support of the national Tea Party Express, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, and the Club for Growth, a conservative group credited with aiding the ouster of incumbent US Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) in last spring’s GOP primary. (Last summer, Angle said that Bennett had “outlived his usefulness” to the Republican Party.) Reid campaign spokesman Jon Summers says that Angle is “trolling for support anywhere she can get it because she’s not getting it from Nevadans. While she’s seeking every out-of-state endorsement she can get, Senator Reid has the support of more than 200 Nevada Republican leaders as well as law enforcement and business leaders, just to name a few. Nevadans are rejecting Sharron Angle because of her extreme agenda to kill Social Security, privatize the Veterans Administration, and ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, just outside of Las Vegas.” Of Angle’s urging that someone “take out” Reid, Angle campaign spokeswoman Lee Rech says the statement “was just a slip.” Angle meant that she hoped to “retire” Reid from the Senate. [Salt Lake Tribune, 9/18/2010; Huffington Post, 9/19/2010]

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